Remember the good old days when a few people on your street maxing out their connections could saturate the cable node? Even better if they figured out how to uncap their connection temporarily. They still could, but usage limits with charges past that at least discourage the behavior.

People get the idea that internet is some magic, ephemeral source of endless data transfer. But it's very much a physical thing with limits set by the quality of the lines and the hardware at each end. Improving last-mile connections only push the limit upstream.

Most usage for a residential ISP will be during the evening. It should be possible to incentive moving bulk transfers to other times.

How does being measurable make it the same as a natural resource?